Supersymmetric Multi-trace Boundary Conditions in AdS

Abstract

Boundary conditions for massive fermions are investigated in AdS_d for $d \ge 2$. For fermion masses in the range $0 \le |m| < 1/2\ell$ with $\ell$ the AdS length, the standard notion of normalizeability allows a choice of boundary conditions. As in the case of scalars at or slightly above the Breitenlohner-Freedman (BF) bound, such boundary conditions correspond to multi-trace deformations of any CFT dual. By constructing appropriate boundary superfields, for d=3,4,5 we identify joint scalar/fermion boundary conditions which preserve either ${\cal N}=1$ supersymmetry or ${\cal N}=1$ superconformal symmetry on the boundary. In particular, we identify boundary conditions corresponding via AdS/CFT (at large N) to a 595-parameter family of double-trace marginal deformations of the low-energy theory of N M2-branes which preserve ${\cal N} =1$ superconformal symmetry. We also establish that (at large N and large 't Hooft coupling $\lambda$) there are no marginal or relevant multi-trace deformations of 3+1 ${\cal N} =4$ super Yang-Mills which preserve even ${\cal N}=1$ supersymmetry.